*Client Services Executive Claire talks openly about her personal, and very emotional, experience looking after a loved one in hospice care, and how the power of marketing can have a positive influence on winning over hearts and minds.*
Despite working in marketing myself I’m still a marketeers dream. Through reading glossy magazines, watching imaginative TV commercials, and spotting online bargains I’m drawn in to purchase products I never knew I would ever need, and I do, pulled in by the way they look and how they are presented to me. I convince myself that these items can, and will, change my life. In the back of my mind I know where that slow cooker, with its extra slow setting, will be sitting six months later – yes, in the back of the cupboard alongside the panini maker!
Working for a marketing agency and helping businesses influence consumers, knowing that I’m being part of that process, thrills me. The first time you see a 48 sheet which you have helped create, or receiving a client call to say they have achieved their targets through the Facebook carousel ad that you have chosen imagery for excites me. To think other people will see these, and could also be influenced by something I have been part of, makes me smile.
For the past month, we’ve been working on (link: https://www.birminghamhospice.org.uk/Appeal/vickys-appeal text: a brief from Birmingham St Mary’s Hospice), to increase people’s awareness and their desire to donate to the huge costs that are required in running a hospice. This client holds a very personal connection for me.
July 2015 was the saddest period of my life to date, my father was in the final stages of his life. Birmingham St Mary’s Hospice guided and helped my mother and I care for him at home, giving us practical advice from how to move him in his bed to administering his medication. Being there as we sobbed for the man who had been our rock, who was kind, gentle and strong and who now fought to get out of the bed even though he couldn’t stand, and becoming angry as we said no.
After a short period it was agreed that the Hospice would be the best place for him, heart breaking questions were asked with care and thought for all. His room was calm and the doors opening onto the beautifully maintained garden allowed for a place of reflection and a moment or two to gather yourself when things just became too much. The nurses couldn’t do enough for us, and the nurse call button could have been pressed a million and one times but you knew that you would be given the same level of care and understanding. The shop, with its steady flow of tea, and the minister who managed to appear just as you needed to feel a sense of peace, they were all there for us.
All of this comes at a price and this is where we at Superdream work to do everything we can, using all of our marketing expertise to ensure people like me, who can so easily be pulled into believing that next new gadget will change their life, will see exactly how they really can change the lives of others. That they will see how giving to Birmingham St Mary’s Hospice will not only provide care for the patient but all the family from the initial advice to bereavement counselling. Giving the chance for people like me to express their depth of anger and sadness to someone who really does understand will, for sure, outweigh the cost of the posh toastie maker that now gathers dust in the cupboard under the stairs…